


The Age of Burning Fields (excerpt)

by TwoHeadedDragon



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: A little graphic description of injuries, But pretty close, Gen, Post-Calamity Ganon, Pre-Breath of the Wild, Purah gets played for laughs but must actually be kind of a badass, filling in missing pieces, not quite canon compliant, so probably not canon with that either, written pre Age of Calamity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25831408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoHeadedDragon/pseuds/TwoHeadedDragon
Summary: In which the world has already ended in fire and ash, but Purah still rides to the Plateau to try to get Link into the Shrine of Resurrection in time.
Relationships: Guardians/Wrecking Everything, Hylia's Monks/Douchebaggery, Purah/Exhaustion
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	The Age of Burning Fields (excerpt)

As soon as Purah understood what was needed, she had flown into action. She saddled her horse, gave instructions, prayed to whatever Goddess was listening, and galloped south. The others would bring the wagon. She hadn’t waited for them to argue. Her head pounded in time with the splash of her horses’ hoofbeats. _Too late, too late, too late._

The rider had told them of his crossing the plain last night, heading for Kakariko to regroup, finding the princess and Link. His partner had raced to find a wagon to carry the body. Link’s body. Purah’s racing thoughts slammed to a halt. _Damn the Goddess!_ she thought. _He was just a boy. They were both just children. How could you have let this happen!_ She wasn’t sure if she meant the Goddess or herself.

The rider had nearly foundered three horses trying to reach her in time, to get her to the Shrine of Resurrection. It had still taken through the night to get to her. Blatchery Plain was very, very far from the lab. _Too far, too late_. She took the road straight south. It would have been a little shorter to cut across the edge of Hyrule Field, but she’d never get there at all if she were fried on the way. The rider had told her of the Guardians he had seen which had made him turn back.

They were apparently stalled now, but still lit from within with that uncanny magenta light. When Robbie had gotten some of them moving again, at the castle, it had been a triumph. It was the sign they all needed that they were on the right track. After years of frustration, they were finally on the edge of understanding. They had been so confident that the Guardians and the Divine Beasts were the answer to all their prayers. Created for one purpose, the purpose for which they were needed now, discovered and reanimated by the best minds Hyrule had to offer. They were the army that would protect them, save them from ruin as it had done 10,000 years before. All they needed was to find where the rest of them were buried.

How many were there now, scrabbling over the hills and fields like a plague of spiders? She had seen a dozen or more when they came for the lab. She pushed her mind away from the memory of the smell of burning hair and charred stone. She couldn’t think about that right now. Everything she had lost could wait. She focused on guiding her horse so he didn’t lose his footing. She focused on keeping her Goddess-damned rain-soaked hair from her eyes. She focused on her mantra, repeated as she rode through the cloud-choked dawn. _Too late, too late, too late_.

A wagon was pulled up at the base of the entrance to the Plateau. There was blood on a blanket in the back. So much blood. Of course they would have arrived before she did. But although the plain was closer to the Plateau, it would have taken time to fetch the wagon. They would have had to move slowly to avoid jostling him. And while the Guardians seemed to be halted, other monsters had begun to circle like vultures to carrion. Who knows how many times they had needed to stop the wagon to clear the way. None of that mattered, though, because the resurrection process couldn’t be started without the slate, which she had. _Too late_. Purah had seen silhouettes of Guardians on the walls as she finally drew near. _So they made it this far_ , she thought. She wondered if the Calamity had known about the Shrine of Resurrection. It had taken control of the Guardians, there was no reason to believe it didn’t know everything. There was bitter satisfaction in the knowledge that they were nothing but hunks of metal now. They represented everything she had worked for, and she was glad to see them dead. She shuddered as she threw herself from her horse and began to run, knowing she would need to pass between the Guardians to get up the stairs. Her brain might know they were dead, but her heart did not. She closed her eyes. If they came to life, seeing them wouldn’t help, and she would just as soon not have the last thing she saw be a glaring blue eye. She flew up the stairs and when she emerged into the light in one piece, someone she didn’t recognize was waiting for her.

“You’re Purah?” they asked. “You must hurry. We haven’t been here long, but…we fear it’s already been too long.”

She didn’t need him to tell her any of this. They ran. Up the stairs, up the hill to the right of the Temple, up to the cliff face. Purah wasn’t sure where she was finding the ability to keep moving at this pace. She had been awake now for over two days. She could feel exhaustion tickling the edges of her body and threatening to slow her mind, but frantic purpose was keeping her going. Forward, forward, up, faster. They arrived at the Shrine of Resurrection and she finally saw Link. _Too late_.

“Goddess,” she whispered, coming to a halt. They had removed most of his clothes, but it must have been difficult to separate charred cloth from charred flesh. His entire torso was a ruin, bone visible in several places. A Guardian’s beam had obviously slashed across his body. He was missing most of his left ear. She stepped forward, kneeled down to touch his face, so pale, his lips blue. Not breathing. Cold. _Too late_.

The Sheikah had enough training to know how to slow the bleeding, what elixirs to administer to keep his heart beating as long as possible. Just long enough to get him here, they told her. _Long enough_ , she thought. It had to be.

Purah spun into motion. She yanked the slate from its place at her belt and slammed it up to the terminal. It glowed as it came to life and a low hum began in the stone around them. This had been the only terminal outside of the Divine Beasts that responded to the slate. Thank the Goddess it had been this one.

“Place him there,” she said, pointing at the brightly lit basin without looking away from what she was doing. She heard them working behind her, but all her focus was on the slate beneath her hands. When she was finished, she turned and stepped toward the table as it began to fill with liquid. His blood swirled through the water as they lowered him in.

Purah reached her hand out and suddenly everything was darkness and silence. Analytically, she wondered if she had finally collapsed. She shook her head to see if she could and felt her damned hair sticking to her face. Yet when she looked down, all she saw was darkness. She was and wasn’t a body. She could sense vastness in the dark. Slowly, lights began to appear around her, constellations and images of places, of the Divine Beasts themselves. Fading into existence before her was a lighted room that seemed to be floating in the middle of the void and inside it were seven figures. Against the sudden brightness, she couldn’t make out more than their shapes.

“The Scientist,” said a voice that reverberated like a gong in her head but did not disturb the air around her. It was a single voice, and the voice of the Sages, and the voice of the Three. “You stand before us in the name of all the Goddesses that are. You have dared to seek their help. Why have you brought _him_ to this place?”

Purah was frozen. She was a woman of logic and the rational. She possessed feeling and humanity, yes, but had never been much of a believer in things beyond what she could touch and measure. She hadn’t known what to expect from starting up the shrine, but this was far beyond her wildest imagination. She felt tiny and very young.

The voice cut through her thoughts, impersonal and abrupt. “That one’s time is done." The voice was dry as stone, emotionless. "It is time to turn over the field and plant anew.”

She thought of Link’s blue lips and his mangled body lying in reddening waters, and she looked up toward the searing light, blinking through the pain that assailed her non-eyes. Her voice felt stiff and small.

“Please,” she said. “We can’t lose him. Not now. It..it _can’t_ be too late. Please. By the time you…reincarnate him or whatever it is you do to them, there won’t be anything left of Hyrule to save.” She shook her head in frustration. All her academic eloquence and all her passion were just beyond her grasp, and she knew she sounded pathetic. She was just so damned tired. She took a breath and attempted to gather her thoughts for the argument she wanted to make. She had to tell them that this boy had loved his family. That he had excelled at everything that was asked of him. She had to tell them who Link had been before his destiny had claimed him. A beautiful, sand-haired boy who laughed at mealtimes and caught frogs for fun. She needed to tell them about who Link had been after. Quiet, serious, dedicated. She had seen the beginnings of despair in him but had seen also how he worked to keep it at bay. Most importantly, she needed to tell them of the fledgling support he and the princess had found in each other. This is why it had to be him and none other. They had all believed their unity might finally be the key to her powers. _Too late._

As fast as her thoughts were racing, she was still too slow. The voice spoke again with finality. “Another will be born to take his place. It is the way of things. This one was simply too weak to succeed.”

Over the years, Purah had cultivated the ability to be calm in the face of antagonism. As the youngest member of every professional group and council she had ever been involved with, she had required herself to be the steadiest, the most mature individual present at all times. It was necessary in order to make others take her seriously, so that she could continue her work. And she had done it well. But she had always had a temper, and she was too exhausted to contain it now. She tensed, furious.

“ _This one_ ,” she said through clenched teeth. “Have you been watching any of this? He died for us! He was ripped to pieces for us. For _you._ By the machines that were supposed to be our salvation! Have you just been sitting on your thumbs here in the dark?” In the back of her head, a small voice said, _So much for that eloquent argument. If he weren’t already dead, you’d get him killed_. She answered herself coldly, _We are all already dead_.

“You overstep,” said the voice.

Purah scoffed, and spat “then throw me into this fucking pit." She couldn’t have stopped herself now if she had wanted to. Which she did not. In for a green, in for a gold.

“Where were you?” She raised her voice, pitched to carry. “Where were you, _Hylia?_ When the princess nearly drowned herself seeking _your_ power? She was a child! And after all that, the thing that unlocked her power was watching the Hero die? After she had learned to care for him? What kind of bullshit plan is this! You’re supposed to shelter us beneath your wings, but your people are dying in flames by the thousands.” She was trembling now. “You fed us just enough information in prophecy to lead us to the Guardians. But we’re technological infants compared to our ancestors. You showed us the tools for our own destruction and gave us just enough knowledge to gift the Calamity a way to annihilate us. Your Hero wasn’t weak. You abandoned him! He was unprepared. We were all so unprepared.” Her voice broke. “How could anyone have been prepared for _this?”_

Silence met her outburst and it echoed in her ears. It stretched for a minute, a thousand, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. All she knew was the bone-deep certainty that “all the Goddess that are” had turned their backs on them. On Zelda and Link. On all of Hyrule. And all was lost. _Too late_.

When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. “Send me back.”

A moment more, and then the only response was the void around her dissolving into broken drops of light, replaced by the light of the table which was blinding as she opened her eyes. With her mind not quite attached to her body, she observed her hand, still hovering in the act of reaching forward. No time had passed. The machine’s hum deepened as it initialized and the bloodied water faded to pink, then clear, then became opaque. Link’s face was hidden from her beneath the water’s radiance. All at once her awareness settled and she swayed.

“Purah! Are you alright?” asked one of the men. “Is this…what’s supposed to happen?”

“I…It’s activating?” She swallowed, lips numb. The words emerged as a broken whisper. “It’s working.” She reminded her body to breathe. “We need to get ready to go. The doors will seal.” As the men gathered their things, Purah moved to settle the slate in its cradle. She placed it gently, holding it with both hands. A holy relic returned to its altar at last. The screen lit as the countdown began: _Sealing in 60 seconds. 59. 58._

Task complete, Purah could not escape the cave fast enough. The vibration of the machine was in the ground, in the air, in her skull. On trembling legs, she made her way up the stairs and out of the womb of time to the surface. The rain had not stopped. Perhaps it would never stop. She stepped to a tree for support and leaned her forehead against its bark, arms encircling it like a sister. Would she become like this tree, she wondered. As she waited? Strong, tall, and constant? Or would she crumble and rot like an old stump in the forest? Behind her, inexorable as the turning of the earth, the machine hummed. In front of her, as far as she could see was ruin.

The men emerged from the shrine and one of them came to her.

“Are you alright?” he asked her, taking her by the elbow and leading her away from the tree to sit on the grass. Her body ached and shook with all she had asked of it these last many hours. All she could see was bright lights and flames, smoke and blood and death. She saw the bloody meat that used to be Link’s body. She saw the machines she dedicated her life to, had placed her trust in, incinerating everything that moved. She saw the faces of people dear to her. Behind them in the hill, the doors of the shrine whispered promises as they swung shut, and Purah closed her eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> The monks always remind me of the Watchers' Council from Buffy. Bossy and powerful but removed from the reality of what's going on, and consequently kind of a pain in the butt.
> 
> **This is part of something longer, so I would really appreciate any thoughts/ideas/critique that you might have.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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